ABS-CBN News couldn’t even figure out who’s behind this so there’s nothing else we could do but speculate…
So far, we only have a few facts regarding AkoMismo.org:
First, the domain “AkoMismo.org” is owned by an ad agency, Tribal DDB. This supports the theory that this campaign is for the 21st Ad Congress as mentioned in Martin’s post.
Second, the IP address “125.5.116.82”, as pointed out in YugaTech, is owned by PLDT. This supports the theory that this is for a political campaign for Manny Pangilinan, PLDT Chairman.
However, Smart denies any involvement in this.
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While thinking about this issue, I remembered that PLDT provides static IP addresses in their business solutions packages. PLDT owns the entire 125.5.*.* range, but it’s possible that they’re just the ones managing and leasing the IP address.
After a bit of brute forcing, I found out that Infocom/PLDT leases out IP addresses under that range to other entities. For example, 125.5.114.58 is for Mindanao Daily Mirror, a newspaper based in Davao City. Another is 125.5.123.40 which is used by GlyphStudios, Inc. for BUZZ.
By now we should be sure that PLDT doesn’t own AkoMismo if not for one catch: there are no other websites using the 125.5.116.* range. On the other hand, the 125.5.114.* and 125.5.123.* ranges contain multiple websites from different companies.
It is still possible that PLDT actually owns the range for their own use because otherwise the APNIC result would show who they’re leasing the range to. For example, Z-Zone Games owns the 125.5.2.* range and the inetnum in the APNIC hit is different from AkoMismo’s result.
In short, we’re back to “it’s DDB leasing a PLDT IP address for their site” vs. “it’s PLDT hiring DDB to run their campaign” and “it’s a political phishing scam” vs. “it’s an unintentional mistake from an honest advocacy group”.